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Discipline for democracy? School districts' management of conflict and social exclusion

Kathy Bickmore

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Published in: Theory and Research in Social Education Volume 32, No. 1 (Winter 2004) Abstract: An examination of six urban Canadian school districts policies and co-curricular programs for safe and inclusive schools shows contrasting implicit patterns of citizenship education. Peacekeeping-oriented districts relied heavily on standardized control and exclusion to achieve school safety, and allocated few resources to affirming diversity. Peacemaking-oriented districts supplemented peacekeeping with some regularized opportunities for students to learn to manage conflict and diversity. Peacebuilding-oriented districts provided relatively comprehensive and inclusive programs of conflict management and anti-bias education, embracing conflict and diversity as natural learning opportunities. Clearly such system-level policy reflects prevailing understandings of problems that need fixing, not necessarily actual practice. The paper argues that the implicit, daily patterns of human relations and conflict management in school districts are powerful socializers, and powerful constraints on the explicit education for peacebuilding citizenship conducted in individual programs and classrooms.

The current pressures for accountability and 'zero tolerance' discipline

foreground the contested question of what young citizens should learn in school.

The most egregious impediments to democratic community are overt violence and

persistent patterns of social exclusion. While schools alone cannot completely

abolish hatred, education can make a difference in reducing intolerance and

premeditated hateful behavior (e.g. Avery et. al., 1997; Bush & Saltarelli, 2000; Mock,

1995). This paper presents the conceptual framework, and some partial results, of a

four-year research project that investigates policies and programs designed to

facilitate the development of 'safe' and/or 'inclusive' schools. The context of the

study is a few large urban school districts with differently-diverse student

populations.

The study focuses on school districts' patterns of implicit and explicit

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citizenship curriculum about conflict, violence, diversity and human rights. Explicit

curriculum directly teaches students how they should behave. Implicit curriculum

socializes students' capacities and expectations of self and others through the models

and practice embedded in the diverse ways they behave and are treated in the social

system. These patterns form the contexts that shape and constrain the effects of

planned peacebuilding citizenship education in classroom social education.

Conceptual framework: citizenship education for conflict and peace

Peace and conflict educators (e.g. Bar-Tal, 2002; Christie et.al., 2001; Deutsch,

1993; Fisk, 2000; Harris & Morrison, 2003; Reardon, 1988) and anti-bias educators

(e.g. Banks & Banks, 1995; Bickmore, 2002b; Henry, 1994; Merelman,1990) often

emphasize the importance of values and attitudes as a foundation for justice and

peace. How are such values actually learned? Clark McCauley (2002) argues that

"feet-first" education (changing actual patterns of behavior and interaction, which

disrupts participants prior beliefs and creates opportunities for developing new

understandings) is often more effective than "head-first" education (teaching new

attitudes and beliefs in order to change behavior). Reinforcing this insight, research

on school desegregation in the United States demonstrates that changing actual

patterns of inter-group interaction can cause reductions in prejudice (cited in

Aronson, 2000; Cohen, 1984). Thus explicit curriculum presents important

opportunities to learn, but less-visible education through human relations patterns

such as discipline, access and grouping, and human rights practices may be an even

more powerful attitudinal influence.

Control and discipline often remain prominent concerns for teachers and

administrators, as novices and throughout their careers. Public pressures for

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standardized accountability seem to exacerbate this emphasis on control.

Continuing rapid social and demographic change in North America makes school

cultures particularly dynamic and their regulation a particular challenge. The

resulting implicit feet-first curriculum of behavior management is an important

foundation of students' social citizenship and conflict/peace learning.

Schools in central cities are unique microsocieties that demonstrate the kinds

of citizenship education that are possible and needed (Cuban, 2001; Metz, 2002).

Urban schools bring together vibrant and volatile combinations of young people,

many of them marginalized by poverty, racism, and cultural bias. An appalling

undercurrent in some current educational reforms presents certain groups of urban

young people as somehow at fault for their own failure. At the same time, inner-

city educators delicately balance the demands of maintaining safety (in the face of

real frustration, anger, and social fragmentation) with the mission of fostering

autonomy, social inclusion, and academic success (in the face of deprivation and

standardization). It is probably no accident that the worst sensationalized episodes

of youth violence typically have not taken place in inner-city schools, as prevailing

stereotypes assume: many urban educators have a special wisdom of practice

developed by having handled the challenges of making peace and providing good

education (at the same time) under stressful conditions.

Conflict and its management are basic to democracy. Peace and conflict

theory describes three basic types of conflict management activity (Curle, 1971;

Kriesberg, 1982; Morrison, 2000; Ury, 1999), originally applied to international

conflicts and subsequently to interpersonal and inter-group levels in the context of

education (Bickmore, 1999, 2003b; Harris 1999). These concepts frame this inquiry

into the citizenship education implications of the ways interpersonal and social

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conflict is handled in schools:

Peacekeeping: containment or security approaches

Peacemaking: dispute resolution, negotiation and dialogue approaches

Peacebuilding: redress of underlying inequities and social conflicts to restore

healthy relationships and/or prevent future escalation of conflicts.

Peacekeeping is the simplest system: it relies upon the narrowest repertoire of

strategies for controlling behavior. Peacemaking generally includes some

peacekeeping as well as conflict resolution. Peacebuilding is most comprehensive,

because it includes both peacekeeping and peacemaking and adds long-range harm

reduction through social reconstruction.

To teach democratic citizenship requires a balance of alternatives and

protections relevant to diverse populations and situations, and steady attention to

teaching the skills, knowledge and values of peacemaking and peacebuilding to staff

and students. This study examines contrasting urban school districts practice to

discern which behaviors are treated harshly in the name of peacekeeping, and how

else nonviolent skills and behavior, respect across differences, and environments

conducive to nonviolent citizen engagement and learning are facilitated.

Peacekeeping: control and punishment for safe schools

Peacekeeping attempts to establish security through control surveillance,

restriction, and punishment of violent behavior. Peacekeeping has a paradoxical

relationship to democratic citizenship. On one hand, a measure of safety and

security is a prerequisite to democracy, and indeed to education. On the other hand,

over-reliance on suppression for peacekeeping can block democratic citizen agency.

In school systems, peacekeeping is reflected in burgeoning emphases on

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violence 'prevention' and 'zero tolerance' strict discipline policies, including

mandated codes of conduct. Such efforts emphasize short-term control of violence

and disruption, generally by punishing or excluding individual students, rather

than resolving underlying conflicts or strengthening social relationships. Although

statistics indicate that youth violence is actually stable or decreasing in the US and

Canada, the prevalence of restrictive and punitive approaches is increasing

(American Bar Assn., 2000; Brooks et. al., 2000; Jull, 2000). A widening variety of

youth behavior is being criminalized and managed with standardized punishments

(also Currie & Covell, 1998). For example, the city of Edmonton, Alberta recently

passed a law making bullying of children subject to a ticket and $250 fine

(Teotino, 2003).

Top-down security-based discipline relies on limits and punishments that in

practice may be disproportionately imposed upon certain populations of students.

There is increasing critique of racial, social class, and ethnocultural biases in school-

based discipline (Brantlinger, 1994; Johnston, 2000; McCadden; 1998; Sheets & Gay,

1996; Slee, 1995). School policy and professional knowledge do influence the extent

of such injustice: